The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group PC (President's Comments) Morris Tobias president@melbpc.org.au

As another year comes to an end, perhaps it's an opportune time to reflect on the hard work put into running of Melb PC by our seemingly tireless volunteers such as than Richard Solly, George Skarbek, Ash Nallawalla, John Morris and Stan Johnstone, Sean Clarke and Jason Lee from the Internet team. These people put in an extraordinary number of hours to ensure that we have, what I believe is the best value Internet service available.

Our BBS has, sadly, fallen out of favour with many, but the efforts of Phil Lew, Michael Marquart and the rest of the team continue unswervingly.

The PC Update team continued to produce a quality magazine largely under the editorship of Carol Daniels and more recently Ash Nallawalla. Gary Taig has taken the reins doing production for the last three issues of 1999 and his efforts have been outstanding.

Swap meets are part of our public face. Coordinated by Thom Lyons, volunteers too numerous to mention man the stalls week after week. Ian Rankin took the reins of Training Coordinator daring the year, and is doing an excellent job. Although our trainers are paid for taking classes, they all put in many hours on preparation, notes and attending meetings.

The Webster family continue to provide members with a world-class Shareware selection. It is easy to forget that not everyone has access to the Internet, and those members more than anyone appreciate the effort put in by David, Glenn, Ian and Yvonne.

Each of our SIG leaders deserves a special mention - space considerations prevent me from doing so. If you think the responsibilities of being in charge of a SIG is an easy task, consider how you would manage to keep up to 40 or more people entertained and educated each mouth!

The "office" volunteers are the people who do the unenviable task of folding, enveloping and mailing all those invoices and reminders you get, as well as helping out with other admin and telephone duties. Most office volunteers have been coming in on their set day for over six years. A special thanks to them.

As well as the more high profile volunteers, we should also show our gratitude to those behind the scenes as it were. Our librarian, Gloria Simos has been an asset, weeding out the good from the bad in our mostly member-donated collection of books.

Ian Felsenthal coordinates our home assistance scheme with, again, too many helpers to name individually.

Spare a thought also for the members of our Dial Help service. Many have been there for years, quietly and almost anonymously talking fellow members through problems; everything from how to insert a floppy disk to complex programming matters.

Finally, there are those who have given themselves the unenviable task of being part of the Committee of Management. This is a rewarding but often thankless task: something that really has to be experienced to be appreciated. All members will surely agree that we are very lucky to have a band of such dedicated volunteers - the group really couldn't exist without them

Reprinted from the December 1999 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia